


The Bee Drinks Nectar

by slattern



Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Author is working something out, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a bear, Aziraphale is an emotional eater, Aziraphale is kindof a dick, BDSM, Crowley Has A Walking Stick, Dirty Talk, Dom Aziraphale (Good Omens), Dom Crowley (Good Omens), Domination, Edwardian Period, Edwardian clothing, Edwardian furniture, Haberdashery, Healing Sex, Humiliation, Internalized Homophobia, Longing, M/M, Metaphysical Sex, Oral Sex, Perhaps a tiny smidge of plot, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Power Imbalance, Sad, Sexual Objectification, Shoe Kink, Submission, Switching, Theology, Threesome - M/M/M, Top Aziraphale (Good Omens), Under-negotiated Kink, Wet & Messy, bootlicking, hard times, menswear, scenes simulated do not attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:13:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21882823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slattern/pseuds/slattern
Summary: Crowley directs Aziraphale through an encounter with a friend in early 20th century Boston.___________It had been six weeks since Aziraphale’s seen Crowley. That’s about the longest they go without meeting these days, Crowley’s orbit around the fixed star of Aziraphale as they explore North America a dependable rhythm to existence. In other words, Aziraphale might have predicted that Crowley would be appearing, as he usually did; suddenly, and without concern for whatever the angel might be doing.
Relationships: Aziraphale (Good Omens)/Original Male Character(s), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)/Original Character(s)
Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571059
Comments: 92
Kudos: 123





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Same content warnings as most of the rest of the series, power differential sex, age and physical difference emphasized, and see the tags for the rest.
> 
> Title is from the Buddha in the Dhammapada: “...death sweeps away those who spend their lives gathering flowers. Death sweeps them away while they are still gathering, caught in the pursuit of pleasure. But the wise live without injuring nature, as the bee drinks nectar without harming the flowers.”

**Boston, 1913**

It had been six weeks since Aziraphale’s seen Crowley. That’s about the longest they go without meeting these days, Crowley’s orbit around the fixed star of Aziraphale as they explore North America a dependable rhythm to existence. In other words, Aziraphale might have predicted that Crowley would be appearing one of these days, as he usually did; suddenly, and without concern for whatever the angel might be doing.

At the moment, Aziraphale was engaged in a languid afternoon with a rather delicately built defense lawyer named Edward. Edward was frustrated filing briefs at the firm where he worked, and he was frustrated with the women his prominent family was increasingly desperately trying to get him to marry as his twenties wore on. 

At this moment, Edward had put his frustrations aside. He knelt at Aziraphale’s feet where the angel sat in the upholstered masculinity of his apartment’s sitting room. A thick Persian rug cushioned the young man’s bare knees, his upper body covered in a silk smoking jacket patterned with mossy green embroidery. Aziraphale sits primly upright on the settee, his thick thighs slightly parted, so the boy can be tucked between them. Edward’s head rests on the striped wool of Aziraphale’s trousers, his face soft and hopeful, his eyes turned up to Aziraphale’s, his mouth close enough to the angel’s body that the boy’s warm, eager breath can be felt against his half-hard member, through the fabric.

They’re a bit lost in each other, the air dense with their shared arousal. They’ve been lovers for months, and it’s so much easier now to slide together, easier for Edward to allow himself to have what he wants, to let Aziraphale give him what he wants. He almost doesn’t recognize himself these days. He’s had men before, sometimes even with affection, but the price in self-disgust and desperate vows of resistance felt increasingly steep for a few gasps of release. But with Aziraphale, somehow, there’s no after. No sickening self-awareness to steal his joy. It feels utterly natural, to let the older man into his body, to submit completely to pleasure, to being guided through all the sensations he’s capable of. The playacting of their roles is part of the nature of the thing. It’s not even playacting to the young lawyer, it’s just how it is when they’re together, his supplication to the angel giving him a freedom he’s never experienced before.

The intensity of their focus means they first realize they’ve been joined in the room by a slightly nasal voice teasingly drawing their attention

“Oh ho ho. What’s this then?” Crowley stands just inside the doorway, his dark grey double breasted suit jacket cut close against his body, a narrow brimmed chinchilla hat shadowing his eyes. He’s holding a silver handled walking stick, which he passes from one hand to the other with a little flourish, eyebrow arched as he takes in the scene before him, the angel with his jacket off, the mostly naked young man kneeling submissively at his oxford clad feet.

“Oh! Crowley! You’re back!” Aziraphale’s voice crackles with delight, and a slightly breathy flutter that makes Edward look away from the stranger and up into Aziraphale’s face.

“I am.”

“Er.” Aziraphale’s face seems to work for a moment as he masters himself. “Edward my dear, this is my oldest friend Crowley.” His voice is steady again and he reaches his hand to rest it on the younger man’s head reassuringly. They look at each other for a moment, and some communication seems to pass between them. They've had a companion join their bed before, although never on a first meeting. Edward turns his cheek back to Aziraphale’s lap with a sigh, his eyes soft as he looks at their guest.

“So, Aziraphale, it seems you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of a position here?” The demon draws out the words lazily, giving each one a suggestive insinuation. “Wherever is this afternoon meeting headed?”

“Oh Crowley, don’t be _deliberately obtuse_. You can see perfectly well what we’re doing.” The angel briefly tightens his fingers in the boy’s hair, causing him to sink a little deeper into the plush of Aziraphale’s thigh, looking saucily up at Crowley through his long lashes.

“What it looks like is that you’ve run out of ideas.”

“Is that so? And I suppose you might be able to offer some direction.” Aziraphale looks up from the boy in his lap to meet the demon’s golden eyes. There’s nothing else like it in his whole long existence. Nothing like this feeling, inside his chest, his corporation using its vessels and nerves to express some reality beyond his flesh. It’s been 23 years since that moonless night on the RMS _Teutonic_. They’re rarely apart for long stretches. And every few years, Crowley will instigate some scenario between them that leaves Aziraphale limp, sticky and confused. They never touch, and Aziraphale’s never been able to deny himself any of these encounters.

"Poor thing looks like he's starving. Don't you let him eat anything, Aziraphale?"

Edward catches the drift before Aziraphale, and turns his mouth to the fabric over the angel’s cock, leaves it there, open. 

Aziraphale is still looking at Crowley, taking in his presence, the muting of the buzz of dissatisfaction that dogs him when the demon is away on one of his wanderings. Crowley holds his gaze while walking across the room and taking a seat in the large wingback chair opposite the settee, doffing his hat on the way. He crosses his legs elegantly at the knee, and rests one hand across the arm of the chair, the other on the top of his walking stick.

“Why don’t you let him show me how good he is at giving you his mouth.” Crowley’s voice is warm, smokey and inviting. Edward whimpers, pressing his open mouth against the shape of Aziraphale’s cock in his pants. The angel’s almost completely hard now.

“That sounds quite in line with our plans,” Aziraphale says affably, his hands moving to the fastening of his trousers.

“Have him undress you.” Crowley is still looking at Aziraphale. From his lap comes another, wetter, whimper from Edward.

“Alright then.” Aziraphale swallows. “Alright, Edward, undress me.”

The boy raises up on his knees to unbutton Aziraphale’s collar, his waist coat, then his shirt, pulling them off and laying them carefully on a nearby occasional chair. Aziraphale leans back against the settee, his bare chest covered in thick hair, pale but marked, a dense patch on his chest, and a trail over his belly, disappearing into the top of his trousers. Then Edward is unfastening those, pulling them and the fine white lawn briefs underneath them down to bunch at his feet.

Aziraphale’s trail of hair leads to a golden mess of curls surrounding his cock, flushed, hard and curving upwards towards his belly. The angel sits naked against the settee, the indulgent Titian curves of his body at odds with the tension of his hold over himself. He's not looking down at the boy, he's watching Crowley, as the demon's eyes travel unhurriedly over the tableau before him. 

“I think the boy should eat his fill, don’t you? But best not to rush, it seems a lot to have at once.” Crowley appears unaffected, his drawl still a slightly teasing tone, his long body relaxed in the chair. Aziraphale finds it maddening. He turns back to Edward, lifting up slightly so he looks directly down into the boy’s face where he waits, supplication in his limbs. Edward’s lips are parted as he holds himself in front of Aziraphale, his eyes looking up to the older man’s for a moment, unafraid and willing.

“Perhaps we’ll begin with a taste.” Aziraphale forces his voice to stay steady, deep. He grasps his cock at its base with one hand, the other in Edward’s hair, holding him in place. The angel pushes the head of his cock against the boy’s lips, tugging his hair in reprimand when he tries to open his lips and suck the tip into his mouth. 

“Just a taste.” Aziraphale smears his cockhead across Edward’s lips and cheeks, wet with the fluid of his arousal and the boy’s spit. Edward moans. Aziraphale sees Crowley’s hand on the silver handle of his walking stick open and close briefly, the cane angling toward the other men, before he relaxes back into his nonchalant pose.

Edward’s sitting as he’s learned to, his palms flat on the tops of his thighs, but he’s moving his hips back and forth subtly now, as Aziraphale drags his cock across the boy’s face again and again. Edward’s moans haven’t stopped, and when Aziraphale slaps him lightly on the cheek with his sticky cock, the boy whimpers and shifts against the carpet with enough force that the silk of his loose robe slips down his shoulders. His neck and chest are flushed pink.

“Well, he’s definitely hungry, isn’t he.” Crowley’s voice has a conspiratorial tone now. “Are you going to give him something more substantial, angel?” Azirphale’s cock spurts a drop of warm arousal onto Edward’s pink cheek at Crowley’s endearment, he hasn’t heard it in weeks, months even. He tightens his hand against the side of the boy’s head, one thick thumb slipping into his mouth and forcing it open. Edward widens obediently, and Aziraphale pushes the wet head of his cock down onto the boy’s tongue, before sliding into the warmth of his mouth.

“I’d say he can take more than that, don’t you? Poor dear wants the whole thing and then some. You’d best give him what he needs, angel.”

Aziraphale is in the hazy, pliant limbo these times with Crowley bring him into. He struggles to manage himself. He has both hands on Edward’s head now, and both thumbs in his mouth, before he thrusts his cock alongside them into the back of the boy’s throat, the resulting gag and whimpers muffled by the angel’s body.

Crowley’s hand has opened on the top of his walking stick, his slides his palm back and forth, rocking the cane in time with Aziraphale’s thrusts and the boy’s sloppy mewling. The room smells of sweat and arousal.

Edward’s eyes are closed, but Aziraphale can tell they’re rolled upwards, the boy insensate with the pleasure of his submission, utterly given over to the other man’s care. Aziraphale’s near overcome himself, the twin sensations of his mastery over the boy and Crowley’s guidance leaving him drunk, thrusting into the slack mouth with increasing speed. He can feel Crowley’s eyes upon them. He could spend right here, just a few more thrusts into the gape of Edward’s hot mouth. Aziraphale closes his eyes, and his head tilts back, his throat working as he grunts in pleasure.

There’s a heavy thunk, interrupting the angel’s drive to his completion. Crowley has taken his walking stick in hand and rapped it sharply against the carpet. Aziraphale pulls himself out of Edward’s mouth, holding him still while the boy pants for breath, ropes of saliva trailing out of his swollen mouth onto Aziraphale’s balls and down onto the damask of the settee.

“He’s having such a marvelous time, I can hear it. Don’t you think I should be able to see his pretty face?” Crowley’s voice is almost petulant. He shifts his grip on his walking stick, and reaches it towards Edward where he’s kneeling with his back to the demon. The boy shivers when the cold silver of the handle touches his neck, before it gently pushes his chin upwards towards Aziraphale. “Let’s have him turn around.”

Aziraphale takes a breath. There’s no point in pretending he’s resisting anything the demon suggests. He’ll do whatever he asks. Aziraphale and the boy are suspended in this amber daydream by Crowley’s voice.

“Turn around dear. Put your cheek on the carpet.” Edward swallows, the walking stick bobbing up and down as his Adam’s apple shifts in his throat. He looks into Aziraphale’s face for a heartbeat, before closing his eyes and dropping his palms to the floor. Crowley’s walking stick is pushing into the softer flesh of his throat, following him as he turns on all fours, sinking his face to the rug in front of the demon’s feet. The boy’s robe has slipped down to cover his rear and thighs, tilted up towards the angel on the settee. Crowley drags the cold silver of the cane’s round handle up the boy’s face, pressing him lightly into the pile of the Persian before withdrawing it.

The three men seem to pause together for a spate of breaths, calibrating to their changed positions. Crowley uncrosses his legs, bringing his feet to either side of Edward’s head on the carpet. His boots are oxblood leather, neat black laces disappearing into the cuff of his trousers. The toe of each boot is dark and shiny, narrowing to a rounded point. 

Aziraphale takes a moment in this eye of the storm to remember the upholstery of his settee, a somewhat delicate silk damask with a peacock pattern that he’d had to special order from Europe. He half-stands, drawing his briefs and trousers back up to his waist, before sitting again. There’s no point in trying to force his impossibly hard cock into them, so he settles for letting it jutt lewdly out of his suit pants. He sees Crowley watching him with an amused tilt to his mouth, but he tries to ignore him for a moment, as if he could get his bearings somehow, exert his will in the room, but there’s no real point. Aziraphale meets Crowley’s eye and strokes himself once, twice, giving a gasp when his fingers slide across the underside of his cockhead, slippery with the boy’s spit and his own leakings. Crowley’s amused mouth blossoms into a smile, before he looks down at Edward, kneeling between them.

“Well, I think I was supposed to see this little bird sing.” Crowley hasn’t moved, but the intensity of his focus is so strong it feels like the heat of the sun on the side of the boy’s face. 

“Yes, yes of course. He’s delightfully vocal, isn’t he?” Aziraphale is pleased that his voice barely wavers. He lets go of his cock to reach towards Edward, twitching the smoking robe off completely, the boy trembling in his nakedness. Aziraphale sees the dark plum of the gash between his buttocks contract in the air. The angel licks his thumb and presses it against the other man’s opening, gently, and is rewarded with a high pitched moan from Edward, pressing his face into the carpet.

“Mmmm. Delightful indeed.” Crowley’s eyes stay with the boy’s face as the angel strokes and pets his soft entrance with his wet thumb, and then his other fingers. Edward mews and cries with each touch, staying obediently on his hands and knees, but his back arches to present as much of himself as he can to the angel’s hand. _Delightful_ really is the word for it, and Aziraphale can’t resist taking the boy through his paces for Crowley, drawing an array of helpless sounds from him before he pushes his fat wet thumb into the tight opening, producing a long breathy wail from the man beneath them.

“It rained this morning.” Crowley’s tone is conversational, and Aziraphale looks up at the non-sequitur. 

“The streets are _filthy_.” Crowley’s still looking down at Edward.

“There’s mud on my boots.” Crowley is looking at Aziraphale now, who is beginning to understand.

“Edward my dear,” the angel’s hand stills against the boy as he speaks. “Crowley’s boots have gotten a bit dirty on the way to us. Why don’t you clean them for him.”

Crowley slides one immaculate leather boot across the rug, and Edward opens his eyes. They’re clouded and dark, his pupils huge. The boy lifts his head and places his mouth hesitantly against the toe of Crowley’s shoe. When he lets his tongue slip out between his lips to give a first lick to the leather, Aziraphale sinks two fingers softly into him. With a groan, Edward opens his mouth fully, licking and drooling over Crowley’s boot, rubbing the side of his face against the laces, even taking the tip into his mouth briefly, his tongue against the leather sole as Aziraphale slips a third finger into him.

Eventually, Crowley pushes his other booted foot against the boy’s face, who licks every part of the leather upper, kissing and tonguing the laces, his increasingly urgent cries of pleasure almost sobs as tears gather in his lashes and he presses himself back onto Aziraphale’s fingers. The angel can see Edward’s tight ballsack, the shiny string of fluid leaking from the tip of the boy’s cock onto the swirls of the rug as the younger man begins to lose himself completely to sensation, to his submission to the angel and his friend.

It’s too much for Aziraphale. He slicks his cock with grease from a cut glass dish next to the potted fern on the end table and slides the slippery head back and forth across Edward’s slit. Aziraphale gives a low moan at the sensation and he and Crowley look across the crying, writhing boy at each other.

“Well, seems your pet isn’t the only one who’s eager.” Aziraphale doesn’t care that Crowley is teasing him. He’s looking into Crowley’s golden eyes, his body suffused with desire so fierce it’s painful. He wants to sink his cock into the body in front of him, to fuck him without restraint until he comes inside him, gushing out his ecstasy under Crowley’s yellow, amused gaze.

Crowley abruptly draws his boot back from Edward, whose wet, dazed face falls to the carpet, his tongue licking his lips as though he’s tasting lingering leather. 

“I’m sure such a sweet pet likes nothing more than to be in your lap.” Crowley is looking at Aziraphale, but his eyes drift down to the angel’s thick, desperate cock as he says ‘lap’, drawing out the a before voicing the p with an obscene emphasis. 

Crowley has hardly finished speaking when Aziraphale is thrusting into Edward, driving his length into the other man in one movement, before bending over him, wrapping him in his arms and drawing him up onto him. 

Edward is babbling now, thanking him, his weight on the angel’s lap forcing the older man even deeper. Aziraphale holds him, pressing the boy’s back against his broad, hairy chest, sweat fusing them together. He tips the boy’s head back, his throat curved and exposed under the angel’s hand. His other hand, slippery with grease, finally touches Edward’s member, and they begin to move together, rocking as Edward accepts Aziraphale into his body.

“That’s it angel. I can see you’re giving him just what he wants. I can see how much you like it too. You’re enjoying him so much, aren’t you?”

Aziraphale ruts helplessly into the sheath of Edward’s body. They’ve done this many times in the past months, but it’s never been this. Aziraphale’s confident control over himself as he’s taken and given pleasure with the young man is nowhere to be seen. He can’t turn away from Crowley, who’s looking at him with undisguised affection. The tenderness of his friend’s face is overwhelming, and Aziraphale moans and almost comes right then, his cock tight and throbbing until he stills for a moment.

The pause brings a confused plea from Edward. “Poor boy. Give him what he needs, angel.” Crowley smiles at him with a look of such softness that Aziraphale thinks he might not be able to bear it, truly. The angel closes his eyes for a moment, letting his power drift into the boy, the molten golden slag in his chest easing as he performs the familiar benedictions of healing. He can feel himself travel through the country of his lover’s spirit, seeking out those points of anguish, of shame where his work can enter in. He strokes Edward, and his thrusts into the other man begin again, gently.

Aziraphale is inside Edward, all through him now. His hand is firm on the boy, stroking him with a tight relentlessness that is bringing the younger man to his end. “Oh you sweet thing” Crowley drawls, sounding totally relaxed. “You’re doing so well for us, you’ve worked so hard to please us, haven’t you.” Crowley’s voice is warm and approving, and Edward is moaning in sync with Aziraphale’s strokes, the pitch of his cries rising with Crowley’s words.

“Oh you take his cock like such a good pet. Go on then, let go, let us see you, show us how you let go, show me how he’s making you feel, ” And Edward does, wailing as he comes, his spend surging out of his cock onto Aziraphale’s hand, one fat drop falling onto Crowley’s booted toe. 

The boy’s body is so tight around Aziraphale he knows he can only thrust a few times before he’ll be filling the boy with his climax. Crowley’s looking at him now, the still trembling form of Edward seemingly forgotten. 

“Well, angel, now you’ll show me, won’t you.” Crowley is looking into his eyes without pretense, and Aziraphale succumbs to it, lets Crowley fill his vision as the embrace of Edward’s body brings him to the edge. The demon holds him with his eyes as his orgasm starts to overtake him. 

“You’re going to show it to me, aren’t you angel? Give it to me angel, I want it.” and Aziraphale is coming, his whole being is coming, his wings seizing and shuddering behind him in the other realm, his eyes still locked with Crowley’s. In the insensibility of his ecstasy, his corporation feels flooded with phosphorescence, green light and shadow sliding through his blood before disappearing.

When Aziraphale finally looks away, down, he sees Crowley’s hand on his silver handled walking stick, clenched so tightly his knuckles are a line of white bones showing through his skin.

Aziraphale’s softening member finally slips out of Edward, who’s exhausted and limp against the older man. Gently, Aziraphale slides the already almost unconscious boy onto the settee, resigning himself to whatever damage the damask will experience. He fastens his trousers, but he feels wrecked, sprawled half-naked in front of his friend. Crowley’s hand is relaxed on his walking stick.

“Well. I had come over to see if you wanted to stop for dinner at Marliave, and perhaps take in a show.” Crowley loves vaudeville, and Boston is quite good for it.

Aziraphale doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know how long it will take him to recover from this. While he struggles to find words indicating that he does indeed want to go for dinner, that nothing sounds better at this moment, Crowley looks down at his own booted toe with a small frown, Aziraphale following his eyes down to the sticky drop of come on the leather.

“Although I can’t very well go out like this, can I?” Crowley looks at Aziraphale, bending to swipe the droplet off his toe with one long finger. He holds out his finger to Aziraphale, who looks at the pearlescent smear on the tip of it, before looking up at Crowley. They’ve never done anything like this before. Before he realizes what he’s about to do, Aziraphale’s mouth is around Crowley’s finger, sucking it clean. There’s a long, quiet stretch while the two men look at each other. Impossibly, Aziraphale feels his cock pulse, thicken.

“Thank you, angel. I’ll let you get dressed. Best put a blanket over your ward.” Crowley stands in one light movement, before slipping out of the room into the hallway of the apartment, swinging his walking stick.

Aziraphale closes his eyes, opens them, closes them again. He’ll dress, he’ll cover Edward while he sleeps with one of the soft Irish blankets from the chest by the window. He’ll regain himself, and later he’ll spend the evening with Crowley, eating, drinking and laughing. He feels strangely calm. Perhaps tonight he can no longer bring himself to feel tormented by his love for his friend. Perhaps he’ll just accept what is. Do they have escargots at Marliave? Winkling buttery snails from their shells, dabbing up the garlic and parsley with a torn piece of baguette, while Crowley tells him his latest travels, well, perhaps paradise isn’t so far off.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley continue their evening with Aziraphale's friend.
> 
> “I hope I didn’t break your toy.” Crowley looks at Edward who is still laying on the settee, apparently asleep, naked under the throw Aziraphale had pulled over him before slumping back himself, still half-dressed. The demon’s words are callous, but his face is soft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Chapter 2! There's some aftercare for Edward, but content warnings continue for age difference and power differential, poorly negotiated power exchange and objectification, as well as the tags. These are fantasies with fictional supernatural beings.
> 
> Enormous thanks to Tyrograph, capable and empathic beta, for fine tooth combing and offering suggestions which greatly improved my work. Any errors, excess commas, em dashes and italics are strictly due to intransigence of the author.

A clink of glass startles Aziraphale’s eyes open. Was he asleep? He rarely sleeps, especially these days. The electric lights everywhere are so bright in the night. Gas lamps were an adjustment, but the insistent incandescence seems to fill him with a restlessness that keeps him from falling into even the occasional slumber after a late dinner or especially vigorous sport with a friend. Perhaps he was asleep, or perhaps not.

Under his lids he sees Crowley coming through the doorway. He’s taken off his long suit jacket, the white of his shirt is bright in the dim room. Improbably, he’s carrying a bed tray. Aziraphale blinks to clear his eyes before he’s sure what he’s seeing. There’s a tumbler of water and what looks to be several sliced pears in shallow willow pattern china dish taking up most of the small tray.

“You two look fit for a harem” Crowley balances the tray while using one booted foot ( _ oh, that booted foot _ ) to hook a small carved occasional table and slide it across the carpet in front of the settee. He sets the tray down on it before sitting on a chair at an angle to the other two men. It’s not the same chair he was in earlier, but he crosses one leg over the other in the same pose. Aziraphale shivers. 

“I hope I didn’t break your toy.” Crowley looks at Edward who is still laying on the settee, apparently asleep, naked under the throw Aziraphale had pulled over him before slumping back himself, still half-dressed. The demon’s words are callous, but his face is soft.

The pear looks moist and cool, exactly what the angel is craving, his mouth dry and his limbs stiff. He takes a piece and bites into it, concentrating on the sensation. He can do nothing else. Crowley still manages to disorient and unsettle him profoundly, more so in recent years than ever before. What is happening now? He’s not slammed shut this door between them, the crackle of energy and desire is muted but still pulsing quietly, little waves lapping around the plush, cluttered room. Perhaps Edward’s body lies in the threshold, thinks Aziraphale, propping open the gate between normal reality and the timeless hours when Crowley takes ahold of Aziraphale and drags his secret hungers out of him.

Aziraphale finally hears what Crowley has said. 

“Oh! Edward, poor dear!” The boy stirs under Aziraphale’s stiffening hand where it’s resting on the younger man’s hip. Aziraphale feels something hot and ugly in the center of his chest, his gorge rising. He’d barely given the human a thought, using him, his desire for Crowley possessing him as he filled the boy.

“Have some water, angel.” Crowley holds out the cut-glass tumbler to him, an irritatingly knowing look on his face. “Then we’ll put the boy to bed.”

Aziraphale takes the glass and drinks. He closes his eyes, feeling the water warming in his mouth before he swallows. The pear is sticking in his throat now as he tries to slow his breathing. He should have known, these dalliances with humans were always so morally suspect, trying to balance the scales of his pleasure and theirs, but he’s using them, he always is, this is just the most egregious yet, he’d lost all control and he’s a sinner, a pervert. Never again. He’ll live as a monk from here forward, he’ll read nothing but holy books and drink watered wine and eat dry bread in atonement.

“Angel.” Crowley is holding out the dish of pears and looking Aziraphale full in the face. “Have another piece. You’ll feel better. I’ll take the boy.” Aziraphale takes another slice and after a moment, puts it in his mouth. Crowley places the plate down on the tray and rises, crossing to crouch in front of Edward. After a few breaths, the boy’s eyes open, then widen when he sees Crowley looking at him. Whether due to the darkness of the room or some holdover from earlier, Edward seems unaffected by Crowley’s reptilian eyes. His breath has caught, in fear or confusion, but at the sight of Crowley himself, not his inhuman feature.

“Don’t worry lad, I won’t bite.” Crowley’s smile shows his canines, belying the reassurance. But Edward seems to accept him at his word and closes his eyes again, not opening them even as the demon slides long arms under his body and lifts him. Crowley folds the boy within the blanket against his chest and carries him out of the room, the two slender men a tangle of limbs as they vanish down the hall. Eventually, Aziraphale manages to make himself stand and follow them.

_______________

Crowley has placed Edward in the center of the large bed in Aziraphale’s master suite and sits next to him on its edge. Aziraphale carries the tray of water and fruit, fussily starting towards one side of the room and then another before finally placing it down on an end table. “Come lie down,” the demon says soothingly, indicating the coverlet next to Edward. The angel stretches out beside the boy, twitching his hands anxiously over the prone body in indecision, until Edward opens his eyes, breaking into a dazed smile. He rolls himself onto the older man’s bare chest, nuzzling into him and murmuring sleepily.

“That’s not so bad, is it?” Crowley strokes Edward’s flank as though he’s a hound, but he’s looking at Aziraphale. Edward groans, his body trembling under Crowley’s hand as he closes his eyes again, sinking into the bed between the two older men.

There’s a fire burning in the hearth. Crowley must have started it with a snap when he carried Edward in. The room is becoming comfortably warm and Edward’s breathing even and slow. The demon unlaces his boots before joining them, stretching his serpentine length down the bed behind the boy, still stroking his side where it’s just covered by the soft blanket.

Crowley reaches for the water on the tray beside the bed, holds it out to Aziraphale. "Make him drink this." 

The boy drinks. Crowley hands Aziraphale a slice of pear, and then another, and the angel feeds them to the boy, who opens his mouth obediently for each offering. Crowley hasn't stopped stroking him, gentling his tremors as he drinks and eats from the angel's hand, before sighing more deeply into his broad chest, turning to bury his face under Aziraphale's chin, the movement of his body slipping the blanket off him, his bare side and the curve of his buttocks softly golden in the firelight.

Crowley draws his long-fingered hand along the boy's naked side, the skin skittering under his touch, just barely. He rests on the boy's hip, his hand curved around to slip the pads of his fingers into the curled dark hair just visible beneath the blanket. Edward whimpers, pushing his face into the angel and arching his lower back, almost imperceptibly.

"Feel him, Aziraphale." 

"Crowley… I don't… I'm not.." The angel's mouth is twisted as he worries the inside of his cheek. "I should never have…"

"Just feel him." Edward, listening, tilts his face up to Aziraphale, who can only answer his invitation by leaning down to kiss the boy. As their lips touch, mouths opening, he lets his awareness sink into the younger man, a lead plumb dropping into a warm sea.

He can feel Edward's desire, banked but not slaked by Aziraphale's possession of his body in the other room, by Crowley's rapier penetration into his unvoiced desires. There's some quaver of questioning or doubt there, but it's the boy's own, at what he wanted, what he was willing to do. The golddust of Aziraphale's angelic energies is still shimmering inside him, but there's something else too. Something Aziraphale knows, and does not know. Organic ripples of green and brown, a taste in the mouth of ancient, fertile loam, winding through the boy's flesh.

As though he senses the angel inside him, Edward deepens their kiss, small wordless hums of pleasure filling the angel's mouth with wet vibrations. Crowley slides his hand from the boy's hip to the back of his thigh, pushing it towards the mattress, his buttocks parting to the demon's gentle pressure. His opening is reddened, tender, still sticky with the angel's leavings. Edward's tongue thrusts into Aziraphale's mouth. The older man feels the boy's arousal, a slow, molten river of underground lava. 

Crowley's hand is gliding up Edward's thigh, his fingers traveling up the delicate skin of his cleft to rest on the swollen rim of his entrance. The boy hisses into Aziraphale's mouth when Crowley drags two fingers across it, pulling it open into a tiny pink gape.

Aziraphale pulls away from Edward, dismay contorting his face. "No, no, we can't…" He doesn't finish his thought before Edward is chasing his mouth, whining at the loss of contact.

Crowley's voice is low, rough, grey basalt. "Will you not trust me the way your pet does?" His fingers move again, spreading the raw, used boy open further. Edward moans pitifully against the angel, tilting his hips under the demon’s hand.

Crowley strokes the boy's tender slit, gentle but implacable. Aziraphale feels his own want mounting, he imagines himself a fat beetle pinned to a board, pierced by Crowley’s voice and the demon’s fingers sliding through his own spend matted on Edward’s body. The boy is whimpering against the angel, small noises that might be please, please, and yes, yes.

Aziraphale is giving in, the curdle of self-loathing ebbing out of his blood, as the wet earth of lust and his love for this creature before him ( _ oh my beloved friend _ ) begins to take him. Edward's breathy pleading has becoming more rhythmic, and the angel can feel the boy's hardness hot and seeking against his upper thigh. He does trust Crowley, more than any other being. Why should he deny that truth, here in this secret, firelit room? Perhaps he's willing ( _ again _ , he admits to himself) to meet Crowley in some place beyond the veil of goodness and badness, a perfumed twilight where the serpent’s wisdom perpetually renews reality and nothing is fixed, not even the orientations of heaven above and hell below.

Were they other lifetimes, the centuries of control and resistance, all the warm and dim rooms where Aziraphale would stand, shake off the hypnosis of Crowley's invitations and leave, walk out into a cold night and later gasp his miserable, lonely sins into his tight fist? These modern decades have unmoored him, the light bulbs making night into day, his compass spinning, ruining Aziraphale's appetite for self-abnegation, the tortured constellations of his desire and repentance no longer reliable guides. The men he’s loved and who have loved him have changed him too. How can he suck the poison from their wants, filling them with the seed of absolution, and not wonder if what is forbidden to him is also merely a matter of opinion? 

Aziraphale has spoken to the Holy One, or been spoken to, long ago, but he doesn’t claim to know the will of the Creator. His charges were given him by the Host, the angels and their texts, directives issued him during cold interviews at Head Office or deeply unpleasant site visits from Archangels carrying updated creeds and codes of conduct. How can the One Beyond Time need updating? 

Was there a  _ before  _ when Aziraphale did not long to be good, and fear to be bad? When he didn’t think he was flawed, a cracked amphora around a leaking soul? But how was he created - with this jagged seam in the glazed curves of his being - if not by the Potter, who shaped him and placed in him the kiln?

Aziraphale's carotid throbs in his throat, aware of the deadly ground these questions lead to, aware also of Edward’s hand, slipping down his front and hesitantly touching his hardening cock through his trousers, seeking a permission.

With a groan of submission, Aziraphale rolls onto his back, drawing the boy over him, their shafts sliding together in a parallel of pleasure, the rough wool of the angel’s trousers against his nakedness forcing a gasp from the younger man. Crowley follows their movement, drawing up on one elbow as his other hand pushes Edward’s thighs apart so they fall on either side of the angel’s, the boy’s slack, flushed face on the angel’s furred chest, eyes closed and mouth open. 

The demon lifts his hand and runs it the length of Edward, from his sleek head, down the curve of his spine where his body rests over the angel, into the split of him between his wide spread legs. Aziraphale can feel the heat of Crowley’s fingertips where they’ve come to rest, almost touching his body where he lies under the boy. He wants to thrust, against Edward, into the promise of Crowley’s delicate fingers. 

Aziraphale hands tap along Edward’s vertebrae, the boy curving more tightly against his body in response, panting. He’s arching his back like a cat as the two men stroke him, Aziraphale tracing the long lines of the muscles on his flanks, Crowley’s pointed fingertips circling and soothing his swollen opening.

Aziraphale takes a hand from Edward’s body to lift his chin. “Do you want me to give you to him, my dear? Do you want him to take you?” The boy’s response is inarticulate, but clear, as he gives a whining exhale, sliding his knees farther apart so his cleft opens obscenely under the demon’s fingers, the iron of his member insistent against Aziraphale’s belly.

Crowley has oil from somewhere, whether Aziraphale’s or summoned, the angel isn’t sure. The demon is pouring it from a slightly showy height onto the softness between Edward’s legs. He jumps and shivers like a colt with each splash of the cool oil hitting his contracted balls, his sensitive rim, trailing down his perineum. His thighs become slick, shiny. The oil is soaking into Aziraphale’s trouser front now, he can feel it, and it’s slippery between him and the boy, as Edward pushes his cock against the older man’s compulsively, small sobs coming in time with each dragging slide, his eyes tightly shut. He only squeezes them shut tighter when Crowley slips two slim fingers in him to their length, the curled fist of the rest of his hand pressing against Edward, intensifying the cries as each thrust of his fingers forces his knuckles against the responsive tenderness of the boy’s body.

There’s not many of Crowley’s merciless thrusts into Edward, spread open to his extremis across the angel’s body, his reddened entrance slipping open helplessly beneath the surge of Crowley’s fingers, the pressure against his body and the sliding friction of his swollen cockhead against Aziraphale’s trouser placket. Edward is coming, spasming against Aziraphale’s body, sobbing and coughing helplessly into the angel’s collarbone. The wet of his come blends with the oil on Aziraphale’s trousers. He will mourn them later. For now he can’t help but throw his arms around the crying, shaking boy, feeling the mounting intensity in his own cock where it presses into the boy’s body, Crowley’s fingers still deep inside him.

Aziraphale is kissing and petting Edward, his cries calming to contented murmurs. The boy is still thrusting his body, his softening cock, against the angel. Oh. It’s Crowley, slowly, softly, pushing his long fingers in and out of Edward. The boy is so relaxed and limp there’s no resistance at all to Crowley’s hand as he fucks the boy, pressing him into Aziraphale’s lap and his hard arousal.

Aziraphale buries his face in Edward’s shiny hair, kissing and soothing him as the boy nuzzles him. He can’t look at Crowley’s face. He closes his eyes as the pulse of Crowley’s rhythm pushes Edward against him, slightly faster.

Crowley has stopped. Aziraphale can feel his eyes on him. He’s waiting for something. For the angel to open his eyes so they can look at each other and acknowledge this, barefaced.

Perhaps I’ve Fallen already, thinks Aziraphale. And this is hell. Where I can’t have him, fully, ever. Where I can’t be as I am, truly. Hemmed and hedged by fear, asking my little questions but never  _ acting _ . Letting Crowley take each risk, each leap toward me, so I can always escape, get out a back door. So he can get away too, I could always sever the rope between us and vanish us from each other’s sight in an instant. I must be damned, I can never say no to him when he asks me. Not any more.

Aziraphale opens his eyes, but Crowley is looking away, down at Edward. 

“Now lad, you’re very close to your… what are you, his mentor? Friend of his father’s?  _ GuildMaster _ ?”

“Friend is just fine, thank you.”

“You’re very close to your  _ friend.”  _ Crowley’s lascivious emphasis gives no doubt as to what he thinks of their relationship. “You’re very grateful for all he’s taught you.” Crowley reaches out and tugs on the boy’s hair where he lays against Aziraphale. Edward moans and thrusts his soft cock against the angel’s lap. Yes, he’s very grateful, so grateful.

“Why don’t you show him how grateful you are for all his wisdom and advice and take care of him with your mouth.” He’s still tugging the boy’s hair, urging him to lift off the angel and slide down the thickness of his furred body, which he does, turning his face to drag his cheek along the golden softness of Aziraphale’s hairy belly. He raises his hands to open Aziraphale’s trouser fastenings, through his own spendings and the slickness of oil. He frees the angel’s thick, flushed cock with a cry of happiness, cut short as he is about to sink his pink mouth onto its fat, sticky head.

Crowley’s hand in Edward’s hair has stopped him, his tongue just touching Aziraphale, who’s cock has twitched in contact with the moist warmth of the boy’s mouth. Edward sighs, and Crowley’s fingers tighten in his martin-dark hair. Crowley’s grip slackens and Edward’s mouth is slipping around Aziraphale’s cockhead, until Crowley tugs him to stop. Edward whines. They go again until Edward realizes he must let Crowley guide him, up and down the length of the angel’s stocky member, opening his mouth around him slowly, as Crowley sets the pace.

Aziraphale has his head pressed back against the pillow, his eyes shut and his arm thrown over them. He can’t look at Crowley, not as the rhythym of the demon’s hand is guiding Edward’s mouth, the cadence at Crowley’s pulsebeat, he’s going to come, he’s going to die, he’s going to go to hell, he is in hell, he is in heaven, he’s going to fucking come so hard.

The boy’s mouth stutters briefly, and then resumes, a slightly different tempo. Aziraphale lowers his arm and opens his eyes. Crowley has slipped up the bed and looks down at Aziraphale. Golden eyes meeting grey. The demon appears adrift, his eyebrows drawn together in uncertainty as he looks down at the angel. Aziraphale feels his friend over him like a cresting wave, his lungs full with his love and desire as though he will breathe it in place of air when the sea overtakes him.

Aziraphale raises his hand to Crowley, stopping a hair’s breadth from the other man. He feels the heat of Crowley’s face, the downy hairs on his skin almost brushing the angel’s palm. Crowley looks at him - somehow young, unsure, his wet lips parting over his teeth, his longing more naked on his face than Aziraphale has seen in two hundred years. Crowley closes his eyes, brow unfurling. He’s turning his face into the angel’s hand, to press his lips to the curve of it, the air sparking in anticipation of the connected circuit. Then his mouth is on Aziraphale’s hand, the angel is pressing against his friend, he’s wrapping his fingers around the curve of Crowley’s jaw, he’s coming into the boy’s mouth, back arching right off the bed as his hand clutches at Crowley’s face, the demon’s lips hot and wet against his skin and it feels like it will never be not this moment, it’s lasting longer than all of Aziraphale’s 6,000 someodd years.

And then it’s over and Edward is climbing up his chest to kiss his mouth with his own taste on his tongue, and he’s wrapping his long arms around the angel and nuzzling into him like a limpet.

Crowley’s face closes up like an oyster around a pearl and the wave draws back into the sea, leaving the beach bare save for white bones of driftwood.

“My darling…” Aziraphale has not come totally back to his senses and the extravagance of the endearment just slips out. “Don’t…” Don’t what? Don’t go? Don’t you want to let me hear you come, see you come? Don’t talk about it? Don’t do it again? Don’t not do it again?

“Well.” says Crowley, no trace of the vulnerability writ on his features a few breaths ago. “I must be on my way actually. This evening has got a bit more  _ involved  _ than I expected when I popped in. I’ll see you at Marliave tomorrow, angel, 8 o’clock? Expecting travel back to the Continent coming up. Something’s happening.” Crowley bends and pulls his boots back on. “And don’t forget to wash the boy off, it’s disgusting the way you put them away wet.” He smacks Edward’s sticky buttock as you would a horse, and he’s off down the hall and out of the apartment. As though he were an apparition.

Aziraphale has Edward fetch some cloths warmed in a basin of hot water from the bedroom hearth kettle. It’s only common sense, the boy has been so thoroughly used tonight. The angel takes off his poor, abused trousers. Perhaps he could have Crowley miracle them clean? No, that would require bringing  _ this  _ reality - of firelight and moaning and stickiness and Crowley’s insistent, overwhelming guidance, and his lips on Aziraphale while he was reaching into his climax - into  _ that  _ reality. Where those things did not and could not happen.

Edward cleans the older man of oil and the mix of their spendings. Then the angel pulls the boy up onto his chest, reaching down between his spread legs to clean his buttocks, his tender cleft and the swollen plum of his opening. Aziraphale restrains himself, only fingering gently to feel the remains of his own come inside the entrance, that Crowley’s elegant hand had fucked deeper into the boy. The angel shivers, and Edward whimpers at the probe of his raw gash.

When they’re both clean, Aziraphale feeds some pears and water to the boy, drinking some himself, before pulling the blanket over them, Edward curled against his side like a kitten on its mother. Sated, Aziraphale tries to drop his awareness into himself. This is much harder and less enjoyable than drifting into Edward or any of his human lovers.

Drawn over everything are the hot, treacherous cobblestones of his self-disgust. He’s gone too far this time, truly, both with the boy and his tender mortality, and with Crowley, his beloved friend. He had looked like a boy himself, a millenia-old soul unarmored and tender as the luminescent oyster flesh inside the shell. Could he even hear Crowley’s suffering over the roar of his own? Where can they go? Where can they be, away from the eyes of the rulemakers? Crowley is right, something is shifting and stirring - in Europe, and also in the ley lines, the patterns of ethereal energy. A gathering, a drawing in, a racing towards something.

The boy is snoring quietly now like an exhausted puppy, and Aziraphale supposes he’ll have to miracle him into a deeper sleep so he can at least go to the kitchen for some cold ham. There might be some of that treacly brown bread they make here, his housekeeper usually brought it with the provisions. There’s comfort, always, in the predictable pleasures of the table. Tomorrow night, French food with Crowley, and business to discuss.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who left kudos and especially your thoughtful, expressive comments (which led to the expansion of this story!). There will be one more chapter closing out this story, and then on to the next. I have sketched out the rest of the series, and expect there to be about 3 or 4 more installments, and an eventual happy ending.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr if you like, [lavraiemonchichi](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lavraiemonchichi)


	3. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I'm sorry this is not happy. The series is really one work, and there will be an eventual happy ending, pinky swear.
> 
> Effusive thanks to my kind and skillful beta [tyrograph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyrograph/pseuds/Tyrograph), whose beautiful artworks you should go look at.

Aziraphale sees Edward off in the morning before sunrise, a cautionary habit instituted for both their well-being that Edward never questioned. He’s quiet, not asking the older man when they might meet next. Dressed in his dark grey suit, pausing with his hand on the door handle, he is the very image of a white shoe firm[1] lawyer at the start of a promising career. When he turns to look at Aziraphale, the shadows of the night before flickered over his face. 

“Come for dinner Wednesday next.” Aziraphale offers. “I’ve gotten some letters from the colonial period I think you’ll enjoy, there’s even a John Adams.”

The younger man nods, agreeing. This is different from the warm feeling of satiety he’s used to after an evening with the libertine antiquarian. There’s something restless in his blood, silver minnows flashing between reeds. It must have been a dream, the tall red-headed man, Fell’s “oldest friend.” He’d _licked his boots_ , he’d let the two of them use him between their bodies, all night long. And he feels no shame for it, only this persistent thrumming under his skin, wanting it again. Edward clears his throat, suddenly flushed, before he’s gone out the door.

\-----------------

Aziraphale should be feeling relaxed and content in the way that only a very lovely Monopole Brut 1906, _langouste à la mayonnaise [2]_ and Crowley’s company can make him. But he’s not, quite. He's caught in waves of memory; Crowley the previous night, commanding and cool, giving way to the nakedness of his face, his lips against the angel’s palm, a kiss, wet and hungry. The inside of his mouth, his tongue, had pressed against Aziraphale’s hand. He’d let the angel into the pink softness inside his body, his saliva still on Aziraphale's hand after the demon left the apartment.

__

__

"They're sending me back to Europe, something is coming down the pike that Head Office wants me to put my fingers in. The humans are going to make some kind of leap. Clever buggers, they don't need any help from me to pursue forbidden knowledge, I tell you that. I'm not sure where it’s all intended to lead but I wouldn’t get too attached to any of your young men these days.” Crowley looks at him, his face blank but his fingers are sliding back and forth on the base of his wineglass.

__

__

Aziraphale did like to get attached, he liked it very much, and he had a hard time not doing it, as he did with all the other things he liked that he should really do less of. But it might be time to get a bit more strict on this score indeed, not just at Crowley’s say-so. 

__

__

“Yes, I’ve had a letter.” Aziraphale points delicately upward with sturdy index finger. “New York and then back across.” The angel takes a sip of his champagne and turns to welcome his _escalope de veau à la Milanese_ with a small noise of delight. Crowley’s ordered a _café frappe au kirsch_ that the waiter places in front of him slightly timidly before scuttling away from their table, but the demon’s watching Aziraphale. The angel sighs, his eyes closing as he enjoys his first bite. He swallows, and sighs again. “I’ll be back in the bookshop at least. It feels like it’s been such a long time.” He raises his eyes to meet Crowley’s, who is gazing at him with his chin resting on his hand and his elbow on the table, his body splayed against the high back of his chair. He’s taken off his dark glasses in the low light of their corner, only a small sconce on the wall behind them.

__

__

Aziraphale realizes with a start that he’s gazing back at Crowley, that they’re both sitting at the table, its white linens brightening their faces in the dim, wood panelled restaurant, eyes soft on each other in the silence between them. The angel allows himself another few heartbeats, meeting Crowley’s golden regard, this forbidden luxury of saying all that cannot be said with the embrace of a look.

__

__

Aziraphale has lived in his human corporation for 6,000 years. He’s learned to dominate its responses when he has to, when he truly has to. Before that, he was the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, he lived on a wall, watched over it. He knows how to close the gates, to seal up around the garden inside himself. This cannot be, out of an evening in Boston, him pouring his love and his want out in front of his friend, the two of them looking at each other with this thing between them on display like gold coins and jewelled rings, broken wood and sodden shoes, flung on the shore after a shipwreck. They’re going back, and they’ll have to go back to the way it was. The angel turns away. He can feel Crowley’s eyes on the side of his face, and when he glances back, then away again, the demon’s mouth has twisted into his familiar sardonic smile.

__

__

“Not sure how much I’ll be able to meet up for drinks when we get back. Head office is planning on running me ragged the next few years I gather.” Crowley drums his long fingers on the table next to his unused place setting.

__

__

“Well, that seems wise regardless, we’ve been getting a bit lax haven’t we?” Aziraphale gestures at the table between them, thinking of Crowley telling the boy to undress him, chest bared under his eyes, of the demon’s trembling, translucent face before his lips were wet and open against the angel’s hand.

__

__

The two friends linger over the remains of their evening, in an unspoken reluctance to leave the table, to leave America and these decades of dinners, drinks, museum exhibits, and the dark corners of whispered, urgent commands and gasping pleasure.

__

__

After Aziraphale has reclaimed his coat from the check, they stand together under the yellow glow of the electric street lamp in front of the restaurant. Crowley clears his throat and holds out his walking stick to the angel. Its silver handle glints dully. “Suppose I’d best return this to you, thanks for the loan of it.” He’d never loaned it to Crowley; the demon had taken it off the angel in their fourth year in America, and pressed the heavy handle into his solar plexus, pinning him against his wingback chair. Crowley had held him there while they both stroked themselves to climax, hands in their trousers. Aziraphale had kept his eyes shut the whole time.

__

__

“Well.” Aziraphale’s voice is gruff, strained. He’s out of practice with dissembling so thoroughly, his body rebels, closing his throat. The angel extends his hand to the demon.

__

__

Crowley looks down at the hand offered him in its calfskin glove. He tilts his head at it, as if to see it from another angle, before his smile is back and he’s shaking the angel’s hand, his fingers pressed flat against the inside of Aziraphale’s wrist where the skin is bare between the glove and his cuff. 

__

__

“I’ll see you soon, angel.” His hand grips Aziraphale’s on this final endearment, his fingers sliding up the tendon of his wrist before the touch is over, he’s tipping his hat and turning, disappearing around the corner.

__

__

Aziraphale stands in the street. His body is heavy, wet, soaked through with sea water, he’s afraid to take a step lest he come apart like the rotted wood plank of a broken ship on the empty beach. After a few breaths he takes one step, and then another, and walks away out of the pool of light.

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1This phrase was too good not to use: “In American slang, a "white shoe" business is a long-established, high-prestige, typically White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) institution. Such firms hired well-tailored people, usually male (occasionally wearing white buckskin shoes with red soles) with useful family connections and degrees from top law schools, such as Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. White shoe firms emerged in the late 19th century, and were usually based in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, where they catered to major corporations. They were especially in demand from major railroads, which were built through complicated consolidations and faced complex legal situations in multiple states.” Wikipedia  
> 2 I couldn’t find an actual menu of this era from Marliave, the oldest French restaurant in Boston. The menu items in this story are taken from a 1913 menu from Restaurant Ch. Drouant, and the drink list for the Boston Retail Furniture Bowling League dinner at Louis Martin’s, March 11, 1913. They are both in the [NYPL digital menu collection](http://menus.nypl.org/menus/decade/1910s) which is a great way to spend 7 and half hours in an unbelievable rabbit hole.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, I started working on what I thought was the next thing and this barged in and was transmitted when I really needed to be getting ready for my holiday travel.
> 
> I have the other story mostly worked out, so there should be more. I hope you like Byzantine mosaics and pussy. I've also had some glimmers of a bigger story arc, so we'll see.
> 
> I'm considering that it might be very nice to have someone read these and suggest things and maybe catch some of the more egregious errors, and I'd be open to doing the same. If you know stuff about the world of beta-ing (I do not) or suggestions, please feel free. Also happily accepting tag recommendations as I'm still feeling my way around the system and the culture.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [This Amber Daydream [art]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22203667) by [Tyrograph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyrograph/pseuds/Tyrograph)




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